6.28.2005

Marketers have long been adept at ripping off youth culture and selling it back to us, but it's rare that it's this overt: to promote its East Coast Tour, Nike Skateboarding swiped the cover art for DIY punk band Minor Threat's 1984 compilation, slapped some Nikes on the guy in the picture, and changed the word "minor" to "major." The band's label, Dischord, promises that they never sold rights to Nike:

"No, they stole it and we're not happy about it. Nike is a giant corporation which is attempting to manipulate the alternative skate culture to create an even wider demand for their already ubiquitous brand. Nike represents just about the antithesis of what Dischord stands for and it makes me sick to my stomach to think they are using this explicit imagery to fool kids into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, can somehow be linked to Nike's mission. It's disgusting.

Is this just the beginning? Carrie McLaren links to a site where readers submit their own co-opted album covers, from Pink Floyd's The Wall-mart to The Replacement's ad for Kleenex:

Terminology: Vancouver artist Alex Morrison's "Poached" series addresses this very topic using skateboarding parlance: just as a poached skateboard move is a stolen one, so is the capturing, repackaging, and reselling of youth culture back to the kids who made it cool in the first place.